Emily Sharp

EMILY A. SHARP, then a graduate student at Arizona State University, Tempe, Arizona, was awarded a grant in April 2017 to aid research on ‘Investigating Cultural and Direct Violence in the Prehispanic North-Central Andes,’ supervised by Dr. Jane Buikstra. This project investigated the role violence played in ancient politics and lived experience across a broad timescale (2800 BC’AD 1450) in the north-central Andes. Funds supported osteological analyses and AMS radiocarbon dating of individuals from six archaeological sites in the Callej’n de Huaylas, Peru. Specifically, this study tested the correlation between different forms of violence’cultural and direct’during the periods before, during, and after Recuay cultural fluorescence. Preliminary results indicate the scale and intensity of direct violence changed dramatically, with the greatest frequency of victims and lethal injuries post-AD 1000. Findings also tentatively suggest an earlier uptick in physical violence circa AD 50-200; however, additional evidence is needed to bolster this claim. Contextualizing these results within other social changes complicates our understanding of how political power and violence operate together. Recuay leaders legitimized their power by valorizing artistic representations of warriors; yet, the centralization of this power was perhaps not accompanied by high levels of physical violence. Through a historical, bioarchaeological approach, this research demonstrates how ideologies of control become materialized in the body, legitimated in material culture, and entrenched in social orders. Future work will continue to address these issues by delineating more nuanced patterns of violence.